Marvel Agents of SHIELD “Hot Potato Soup” Recap Review

With the help of the Watchdogs, Radcliffe has one of the brothers Koenig, Billy, kidnapped in order to find the location of the Darkhold, intrusted to them by Coulson to keep it safe. While the mysterious Russian Watchdog superior has no problem cutting Koenig to pieces to find the information, Radcliffe convinces him to use less torturous methods. Using a the machine he created to map the brains of LMD’s, Radcliffe follows Koenig’s memories to a top secret library only the Koenig’s have access to.

Working to get any answers they can, Fittz tries to break into Radbot’s (Radcliffe’s LMD) programming, but the code is beyond anything he’d ever seen. The tables turn when Racliffe thinks and reacts just as the real Radcliffe, getting under Fittz’s skin, mentioning things about his father. Finally, Fittz has a break through and discovers it’s not the programming, but the actual artificial intelligence inside Radbot’s head. Radcliffe has figured out how to give his LMD’s an actual thinking mind, and they find out Radbot isn’t the only LMD like that, but LMD May shares the same intelligence.

Desperate to save his brother, Agent Sam Koenig joins the team in the Zephyr to track the Watchdog goons, but the trail goes cold. Assuming that Radcliffe will get the information out of Billy, Coulson intends to head to the location of the Darkhold, and the only other person who would know would be a third Agent Koenig, Lt. Koenig, the eldest of the Koenig family. She leads them to the secret library where they are met by the Watchdogs, briefly fighting over the Darkhold. May gets a hold of it, triggering her mission parameters and betrays Coulson, saved just in time by Daisy, warned about May’s LMD by Fittz-Simmons. But, in the chaos, Radcliffe is able to grab the Darkhold and make his escape.

“Hot Potato Soup” was just a weak episode with the sole purpose purpose of bringing back a joke that stopped being funny two seasons ago. The characters of the Koenig brother played by Patton Oswalt ARE entertaining, if you like Patton Oswalt as an actor and comedian (I admit, I do), but the multiple Koenigs has gotten a bit out of hand. There are now five Koenigs. Eric, who Ward killed, Sam and Billy, Thurston, the anti-SHIELD brother, and Lt., the oldest sister (which thankfully wasn’t played by Patton Oswalt). Had their reintroduction to this season, which focuses so heavily on LMD’s, been to confirm what literally everyone has been saying since season two, that they’re very early model LMDs, this might have been a stronger episode. But ultimately, it fell flat with a dead and beaten horse of a joke, and a cheesy Russian villain taken from a bad James Bond movie.But let’s talk about the Watchdogs “Superior.” An industrious businessman, who owns a secret submarine, is a good way to show how deep the Watchdogs pockets run. But, where’s ex-SHIELD Agent Felix Blake? The apparent founder of the Watchdogs in the third season after his crippling injury in the line of duty, he’s been silent since his reveal. Is he still in charge? If so, where does this Superior stand on the totem pole of the Watchdogs hierarchy? Hopefully, this is a question that will be answered in upcoming episodes, but I fear this is another production issue with casting and not being able to bring the actor back. This isn’t my only worry for the show. I feel with each episode it slips further down in quality.